Cross-cultural validation of the Italian Spine Youth Quality of Life questionnaire: the ISYQOL international.
Stefano Negrini, Fabio Zaina, Ahsen Buyukaslan and 10 others
PMID 37195649WHAT IT FOUND
The 16-item ISYQOL International measures quality of life in adolescents with scoliosis reliably across seven countries and languages.
It removes four problematic items from the original version, providing a valid, cross-culturally equivalent tool for clinical assessment.
Key findings
01Four items from the original questionnaire were removed because they failed statistical fit criteria, resulting in a valid 16-item version.
02The final 16-item questionnaire demonstrates cross-cultural equivalence across seven countries, with specific statistical corrections applied for nationality-based differences.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study focused exclusively on adolescent idiopathic scoliosis; its validity for other spinal conditions like kyphosis or post-surgical patients has not been tested. The sample was heavily weighted toward Italian participants (250 of 550) to anchor the cross-cultural comparison, which may limit generalizability to other populations without similar validation. Responsiveness to change over time (sensitivity to treatment effects) was not evaluated in this study. Machine translation was used for the initial English forward translation, though it was reviewed by humans.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial conflicts of interest. Funding for specific authors came from institutional sources including the University of Montreal, Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé, and the Italian Ministry of Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this questionnaire measures the impact of spinal surgery or other spinal conditions like kyphosis. It was validated only for adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis who are under observation or wearing a brace.